“ Borrowed Prey: Part II should be a cleaner experience but promises to be no less provocative as Ms. Ahern takes on the subject of human death, specifically its relationship to technology and the seeming lack of rituals surrounding it in the West.” ”
—New York Times

“A long-held taboo becomes a source of transformation in Carrie Ahern’s newest piece, as the dance and performance artist invites her audience along on an odyssey through death, daring to navigate its darkest depths and chart a new course of celebration and connection”
—Erin Cassin, The Brooklyn Bugle

“It is striking how vulnerable and alone Hall seems at the beginning of the performance. But as the piece progresses, it moves from a place of isolation to one of interconnectedness, as the performers take the audience along on an evocative journey”
—Erin Cassin, The Brooklyn Bugle

“ The (Borrowed Prey/butcher) demonstration has been spectacular.”
—Jack Berkowitz

“Fascinating. I think it is really important for people to see where their food comes from and not just see a piece of bacon on a plate.””
—Manhattan resident Sarah Chiapetta

“You are the voice of the animal.”
—Jennifer Hilton

“ Anyone who believes there are no meaty roles for dancers should check out “Borrowed Prey,” starting Thursday. Performed for just 20 people at a time, it’s the rare dance piece that takes place in a butcher shop. “Butchering is not all that bloody,” says Ahern, who’ll take orders for lamb chops to go, “but decomposing flesh, blood and bone does have a special smell..”
—Leigh Witchel, NY Post

“ Borrowed Prey ….brought me to my knees. An engaging, boundary-pushing, and highly personal work…Ahern is a clever and highly emotive performer. Her confidence, kind calm, and earthiness fortify the inherent authority that enables her to guide the audience through the unexpected, invasive, and sometimes unpleasant elements of her show. Borrowed Prey is an ambitious, thoughtful, site-specific performance art experience. It’s a must-see …. but is not for the faint of heart.”
—Joseph Samuel Wright /Theateronline.com

“ That was one of the most provocative pieces i've seen in a long time. It made me completely rethink what it means to be human…your channeling of Temple Grandin was pitch perfect; i desperately wanted to be swaddled and your cradling of the lamb at the end was an image i will never forget”
—Bob Stein

“ Yet in very sensitively and skillfully absorbing and physicalizing the animal’s responses, isn’t Ahern making the animal seem humanized simply because a human is portraying it? (She must know that there’s no easy answer to that.)
Her final image brings the ambiguity into sharp focus. She doesn’t rise and bow as we clap and get up to leave. She’s sitting on a stool at the rear of the workspace, holding the dead, carved-up lamb in her lap and looking down at it. Madonna and Child. The Lamb of God. Life as death. If you look behind the obvious sentimentality of the picture, it can keep you awake and thinking hard for some time”
—Deborah Jowitt—Arts Journal

“ (Ahern’s) roles as researcher and dancer became fascinatingly intertwined…The result is a stunning work in which Ahern embodies both predator and prey”
—Erin Cassin, Brooklyn Bugle

About SeNSATE

“ Way down in the depths of an abandoned Wall Street bank vault, a performance to remember.”
– Carl Glassman, Tribeca Trib (SeNSATE was October Cover and Feature article)

“ It’s a post-apocalyptic installation, the performers in raggedy fashions, convulsing like maenads.”
– The New Yorker | Sept 2010

“ Both the joy and sadness of the piece come from watching dancers full of muscle and body, in close contact with each other and yet seemingly out of reach to us audience, even though we could reach out and touch them anytime if we chose to break our voyeur bonds.”
– Quinn Batson, Offoffoff.com | Sept 2010

“ The total effect is mesmerizing. I feel myself moved enough to gently pat one of the dancers on the head after she basically collapses at my feet… A unique experience.”
– Judith Jarosz, Nytheatre.com | Sept 2010

“ This dance installation, “SeNSATE,” takes place in an underground bank vault on Wall Street, reason enough to go and see Ms. Ahern’s dancers, accompanied by Anne Hege’s electronic score.”
– Roslyn Sulcas, New York Times | Oct 2010

“ The ensemble work was complex and tense and some of it was terrific.
We came out elated and wandered around Wall Street for a while - I hadn't
been down there at night for a long time, and it was oddly magical; even
the Stock Exchange was illumined in purple light.”
– Alan Sondheim, poet, musician, video artist extraordinaire

“ Within the performance is a deep commitment, enslavement to something just beyond what the viewer can see. The paradox creates a space for SeNSATE to creep in and fill the mind.”
– Voyeur Performa

“ If you go, you'll feel the hairs on your arms tingling....Ahern's choreography and the Bacchante-like performances of her fellow dancers – Donna Costello, David Figueroa, Kelly Hayes and Jillian Hollis – can often sizzle. They take to this work with feverish abandon and put their bodies – maybe even their sanity – on the line.”
-Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Infinite Body | Nov 2009

“ Theories about creation tend to take one of two routes, either there was always something, or, before there was, there was not. Sensate, Carrie Ahern's new work at the Brooklyn Lyceum, speaks strongly for the first of these ideas. ...I realize, on the walk home, rather than watching the creation of the universe, we are watching what is left after the world has ended. Sensate is disturbing.”
-Meghan Frederick, www.I DANZ.com | Nov 2009

“ The whole experience is continually shifting over three hours and will probably shift subtly over the course of the five performances, making this one of those pieces that invites multiple viewing...Only by spending some time inside the piece do all the meanings of the word sensate seep in.”
-Quinn Batson, offoffoff.com | Nov 2009

“ Last night I walked into Sensate mid-way through the second of three cycles and was immediately entranced and enveloped by its world, an other world both deep in the past and far into the future... what I believe makes the piece a complete success and so unique that anyone with an interest in dance or performance must come and experience it, is the perfect, full, and flowing use of the space.”
-Harrison Owen, Fingered Media.com | Nov 2009

“ Between the buzz of fashion week in Bryant Park and the bustle of people rushing along Lexington Avenue at rush hour (the only time the women appear) the performance is a midtown island of calm, craft and counter-consumerism. Nothing here’s for sale…This is an only-in-New York moment: Linger, and you’ll be glad you did. Hurry past, and admit you’ve lost your sense of urban wonder.”
-Margot Mifflin, Margotmifflin.com | Sept 2009

“ Riveting and mysterious …These dancers, draped in crochet, are goddesses clothed in recycled fibers, seen by the public through a window reinforced with silver tape in the shape of oversized chain mail. … A moving and memorable experience.”
-Dora Ohrenstein, Crochetinsider.com | Sept 2009

About The Unity of Skin:

“ Multicolored crocheted webs of fabric by the artist Olek serve as striking costumes and props for The Unity of Skin. Ahern's choreography is striking and original in itself, and even more so in it's use of Olek's creations. One powerful pas de deux takes place with a wall of webbing dividing the man from the woman; the partnering takes place through the gaps.”
-Brian Seibert, The New Yorker | April 2008

“ Captivating... a thing of beauty and strangeness haunted by apparently unconnected moments and discontinuous time. The light/heavy crocheted netting is used as transport, road, blanket, skirt, barrier and semi-permeable wall; it resembles cells viewed through a microscope, shed snakeskin or a heavy-duty spiderweb.”
-Quinn Batson, offoffoff.com | April 2008

“ Very few artists succeed at allowing the audience into the room with the performers; more often, "we" are here and "you" are there. In Ahern's work, we are all here. In her audience, I meet her work as though I'm meeting someone who is a rigorous and subtle thinker, and yet completely transparent and forthright. I'm neither tricked nor seduced. Everything is what it is, but because of the quality of our shared interest, it has become extraordinary."
"a performance that is more truth than representation.”
-Jeffrey Frace | April 2008

“ Hypnotic images... everything had this translucent net like feel, as if our skin cells were magnified and re-set in amazingly vibrant colors.”
-Jessy Smith, Dance Enthusiast.org | April 2008

“ I've never seen a dancer eat cigarettes, fried chicken, and a fly before. And this was all in one dance! 'RAW(hide)' cracked me like a whip. Carrie Ahern provided campy entertainment with a western theme. She's brilliant with physical comedy.”
-Jill Emerson, The Dance Insider | January 2001